Will Dean Understand?
by Swa-Sa Masou
Summary: Set in Season 2, When Jess needs a tutor. Very much Narco, and does not paint Jess in a good light. Only a two-shot, fix-it for Dean and Rory. Rating for dark themes.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: I don't own Gilmore Girls and I'm also not finished with the series. I'm very much team Dean. It took me far too long to realize that Narco on this site means narcolepsy, for when they fall asleep together, but now that I get it I think it's cute. So this is Narco-centric, but will deal with Lorelei and Jess.

Rory sat on her porch, eyes blank, staring straight ahead, willing her mind to think of nothing. She had been in this position for a few hours now and Lorelei was done with waiting for her to snap out of it.

"Honey?" Rory didn't respond. She didn't turn her head around to her mother's voice behind her. She didn't say anything. Nothing. Lorelei walked down the steps so that she was level with her daughter and sat next to her. "Rory, honey, you've been out here for hours. What's up, kid?"

Picking at her nails and refusing to look up, Rory answered in a small voice, "I don't want to talk about it."

However, a lifetime of living with her mother told her that an excuse so flimsy was clearly not going to work. She was right. "Kid, you came home last night crying and I left it alone. You were up half the night. I stayed downstairs because I was worried about you. I could hear you. This morning, you got up and showered and everything like it was all normal. But this afternoon you've been out here staring at nothing. And as your mother, I get to pry just a little to see what's going on." Here she paused, hoping that Rory would start to speak. When she didn't, Lorelei had to push a little more. "Okay, well without your commentary, I'll have to fill it in myself. You were tutoring Jess last night. Your car isn't here." Lorelei paused again, putting these two pieces of information together into a logical conclusion. "Are you going to break up with Dean?"

Rory's head snapped up, her face reddened. "No, mom. No! I love Dean." Her lip began trembling and tears pooled in her eyes. "But he might break up with me when he finds out what happened last night."

Seeing her daughter's tears always broke Lorelei's heart. "Honey, why? What happened? Did something happen with Jess?"

Wiping at her eyes, Rory sniffled. "You have to promise me that you won't freak out, okay?"

Throwing her arm around Rory's shoulders and rubbing up and down on her upper arm, Lorelei grinned, "now you know that's not something I can promise, sweetie. I'm your mom. I reserve the right to freak out over anything that involves my baby."

Shrugging out of reach, Rory replied, "then I can't tell you."

Sighing deeply, Lorelei scooched closer to Rory so that her daughter would have to all but stand up to move away from her again. "Sorry, kiddo, it involved tears. That gives me the right to pull the mom card and make you tell me anyway."

The look Rory responded with was one known all too well in that household, it combined "really" expertly with just a dash of "I hate you", but Lorelei held her ground. Folding her hands and sliding them down her knees to hunch over, as if to try to physically shield herself from the words that were about to come from her own mouth, Rory inhaled deeply, which was in sharp contrast to the small whisper that followed, "Jess kissed me."

Running her fingers through Rory's hair, Lorelei's voice was equally soft, "So this is about how you feel about Jess."

Stomping her feet back down onto the lower step, Rory's cheeks flamed once again and her anger was clearly visible in her eyes. "No, mom, it's not. This is about the idea that I've kissed two guys in my life before this. Dean and Tristan. It was bad enough that I kissed Tristan while Dean and I were broken up. Now, Jess kissed me and wouldn't leave me alone when I told him to stop. I had to run away from him to get him to quit! I just feel like I want to punch him and like I need to take a thousand more showers and go through ten bottles of mouthwash before I see Dean again." She huffed, but calmed down a little. Raking her fingers through her hair and pushing it back out of her face, she continued, "He's never going to forgive me for this."

Still stunned from the words that had come out of her daughter's mouth, Lorelei tried to rein in her anger. "Wait a second, kid, did you just say that Jess kissed you even though you told him to stop? Are you telling me that the reason your car isn't here is because you had to run away from Jess last night?" Rory nodded, not even making eye contact with her mother. "You go take that shower, Rory. I'll be back." Lorelei stuff her hands in her pockets and started to walk away.

Rory jumped up from the steps, "wait, Mom! You aren't going to overreact are you?"

Still walking, Lorelei turned around, "wouldn't dream of it, kid." The smile for Rory's benefit fell as soon as she turned back around. She'd never liked Jess and he'd hurt her baby last night. Luke was finally going to get a piece of her mind.

* * *

The news was all over, Jess had left town. Rory was pretty sure that it was because of where her mom went, presumably Luke's, right after she told her what happened. Jeez, if her mom had the power to get Luke to get rid of Jess because of what she had told her, it was a really good thing she hadn't shared the whole story. Unbidden, memories of the previous night started to flash across her mind. No. She shut it down. She didn't want to go there. She still had to think of what to tell Dean. Well, first she had to get her mom to agree to let her out of the Grandparents' Dinner tonight and _then_ she had to figure out what she was going to tell Dean. She had even considered writing a letter to explain everything, but she had quickly dismissed it. There was almost no way that he would keep his cool long enough to make it through a letter explaining it. And even if he would, she would have to write it all down. As a writer, things that she thought about how to put on a page stayed with her longer than words that she spoke and she didn't want the events of the other night to stay with her.

"Hey, Mom!" She called, mostly for identification of her mother's whereabouts. She heard the faint "in here" come from the kitchen and followed the sound. She found her mother sitting at the table smelling half-empty take out containers. "Why are you smelling those? It's Friday, we have to go to Hartford tonight."

"Ahh, you see, if I have a snack now, then I'm only going to be irritated and annoyed at my mother's criticism of my life whereas if I don't eat this, I'm going to be irritated, annoyed, and starving." She smiled and pointed to Rory as if she had just scored some huge verbal point in a debate.

Pulling out the nearest seat and sliding into it, Rory responded, "Well, then you should definitely eat it so that you're only annoyed and irritated, which might be the same thing, and alone instead of adding starving to that list."

Not one to be tricked by fast talking, Lorelei put down the fork that she had been using to dig some food out of the bottom of a carton. She delicately folded her hands and licked her lips, "Did you just say alone."

Now they had gotten to Rory's real point for coming into the room, she had to tread carefully. Getting her mom to lie to her grandparents about the need for an absence from the usual family dinner was hard. Not because Lorelei had any issue lying to her parents, but because she detested being there without Rory to act as a buffer. Rory's smile was one of mocking-sheepishness. "Yes." She dropped the smile and went into her explanation, "Dean gets home tonight, Mom. I need to be here or he's going to hear some version of some story from someone else. And while there are some I'm more okay with him hearing, I would really like to avoid him hearing that Jess and I were alone at Luke's and that my car stayed there overnight from someone else."

Sighing and picking up the fork again, Lorelei returned to her previous mission to dig out some broccoli. "Yeah, that would be bad. I'll make up something. You take care of you, kid."

For a few moments, only the scraping of utensils could be heard, but when Lorelei realized that Rory still hadn't gotten up, she turned to look at her daughter. Rory was picking at the bracelet that had been a gift from Dean. "Something still on your mind, kiddo?"

Her voice had lost the previous confidence. It was shaking slightly now, "how do I tell him, Mom? He'll never trust me again, he shouldn't trust me again. I love him. I wasn't comfortable doing this stupid tutoring and then I was so desperate to get him to shut up that I agreed to go get ice cream and so we were alone in the car and that gave him an opening and I just messed up so bad."

"You wanna run that whole ice cream and in the car part past me again? I feel like I may have missed a few details in the first iteration of the story you told me." Concern briefly flooded Lorelei that she had wrongfully accused Jess of something prompting Luke to send him back to New York.

Adjusting uncomfortably in her seat, realizing that she had said too much, Rory tried to cover her gaffe. "Oh, I, I didn't tell you that part?"

"No, no you didn't, sweetie. I would be very interested in hearing it." Lorelei leaned over the table, closer to Rory.

Taking a steadying breath, Rory launched into the full explanation, watching Lorelei's face get darker at each sentence. By the end, Lorelei's chair had scooted right next to hers and Rory found herself cradled to her mom's chest.

"Honey, I know you're worried about telling Dean about this, but trust me, he won't be mad at you. I will kill Jess if I ever see him again. And if I've learned anything about Dean in the time that you two have been together, you might have to talk him out of going to New York to kill Jess." Lorelei straightened back up and tucked some of Rory's hair behind her ear. "You going to be okay?"

Rory nodded, "Yeah, this was why I didn't want to tell you. I feel like it was my fault. I gave him that opening to do it and I knew that you would only be mad at him."

Lorelei leaned to look her daughter square in the eye, "You're damn right I'm only going to be mad at him. You cannot blame yourself for this, Rory, at all. You need to promise me that you won't blame yourself, no matter what happens with Dean. Do you promise?"

Collapsing back against the chair in defeat, Rory assented. "I promise. Thanks, Mom. I love you."

Standing, Lorelei gave Rory a hug, "I love you too, kid. Now you've got a welcome home date to prepare for and I've got dinner alone with my parents to get ready to endure." With one more quick hug, Lorelei left the room.


	2. Chapter 2

So, Rory found herself sitting on the front porch of the Forrester residence, waiting for Dean to get home. She had run through about five different scenarios, ranging from not good to downright horrible and was in the middle of the sixth, shaping up to be even worse, when the car finally pulled up. After a quick greeting to Dean's parents, Dean jumped out, all smiles, to greet her himself.

The two waited for the car to pull into the garage before they shared a kiss.

Pulling back, the smile faded from Dean's face. "What's wrong? I can tell something's wrong."

Taken aback, Rory tried to control her voice and her facial expressions, "how do you know something's wrong?"

Sliding an arm across her shoulders and taking it as a good sign when she leaned into the half-embrace, Dean explained, "Well, for one, it's Friday night and you're here. So that must mean that something is important enough either for your mom to lie for you or for your grandparents to let you out of the weekly dinner. For two, you're here, to greet me as soon as I got home. I figured you'd be waiting for me to call."

Rory smiled. She didn't need to be worried. This was Dean. This was her Dean. He knew her so well, surely they would be able to work through this. The fact that he knew this just from her presence reassured her. "Well, Mr. Perceptive, as a matter of fact, my mom is lying for me so that I can come see you. Do you want to go for a quick walk?"

Straightening his tall frame without removing his arm, Dean sighed, "Ahh, there it is. Here I was rethinking that something was wrong because of the hello kiss and the closeness, but you want to go for a walk, to talk." He started to lead her down the sidewalk, "So, what do you want to talk about?"

Twining the fingers of her left hand with his from the hand thrown over her shoulder, Rory squeezed them gently, "Wow, you're negative tonight, why do you think this is bad?" Never mind that this was bad and he was exactly right about everything so far. She was stalling.

Giving her a sardonic smile, Dean clarified, "If it was just gooey, romantic 'I missed you' stuff, we could have stayed on my porch or even gone inside."

Another explanation was on the tip of Rory's tongue, 'maybe I just wanted to stretch my legs' or something similar. But she bit it down. He was right, this wasn't a conversation she had wanted his parents to overhear. "Okay, you're right. There is something wrong and I do want privacy to talk to you about it." The two were nearing the town square by this point and made their way to a nearby bench, secluded from the street by a small copse of trees. "But before I start," Rory pulled on Dean's jacket collar and crushed their lips together. This was the kiss she wanted. These were the soft, warm lips she wanted to meld with hers. These were the hands that she wanted to feel tightening around her waist. She broke the kiss to find Dean breathing heavily and looking confused. "I want you to know that I love you and I wouldn't do anything purposely to hurt you."

Looking away from her, mouth agape, Dean ran a hand through his hair. "Rory, I've got to be honest, this is kind of giving me whiplash. You're waiting for me and smiling on the porch, but you're clearly worried about something, you want privacy to talk, it sounds bad, you kiss me like that, and now you say that you don't want to hurt me. What is going on!?"

He had a fair point. Rory still wasn't sure how to start this. "Okay, I've got something to tell you. But will you promise me that you won't interrupt me? I need to get this out and I don't know if I can if you get mad an interrupt me."

Leaning back against the bench and spreading his arms across it he squared his shoulders and cracked his neck in frustration. "I promise I'll keep the interruptions to a minimum, okay?"

Rory sat as straight as she could and tried to adopt a tone of fact-giving. She was just giving a report like she did all the time in school. This would be fine. "Thank you. So, while you were gone, Luke asked me for a favor. He told me that Jess was all but failing out of high school and he needed a tutor. He-"

"What?!" The anger was evident in Dean's eyes already, this wasn't going to be good

"Just wait, please" He gestured for her to keep going, "I accepted on the condition that we study in Luke's Diner, in front of all the windows so that the whole town could see it was innocent studying. I didn't want to give him or anyone else the chance to think that anything was going on." Dean's exhale was audible and he was refusing to look at her, but since his first outburst, he had remained quiet. "He was being so annoying and he wouldn't shut up and work on anything. Eventually he promised that he would focus if we went and got ice cream."

Lifting a hand from the back of the seat, Dean gestured to Rory, "Oh come on, you know he was just trying to get you to go somewhere with him!"

Lowering her voice and her gaze, Rory knew that he had a right to be angry with her. "You promised."

Huffing out a "fine," Dean settled back into his previous position, looking very much like he was barely restraining his temper.

"So then he made some stupid comment about wanting it in an actual cone instead of just getting some from Luke. I finally gave in and we went to get some. As we were eating, I dropped my keys and he picked them up. I didn't have the energy to fight with him, so he ended up driving us –"

Dean leapt up at that moment, "In your _car_ , Rory? In the car that I made for you? I can't believe this." Rory was trying to say something, but Dean kept going. "I know, I know, I promised I would staying quiet, but if you're running around with other guys in the car I built for you the second I'm out of town, I think I deserve to let off a little self-righteous anger!" As soon as he stopped speaking, though, he realized that he disagreed with himself as he noticed the tears welling up in her eyes. No matter what she was telling him, he shouldn't be making her cry. He sat back down, the anger draining off of him. "Hey," he reached a hand up to cup her cheek and slid his thumb under her eye to wipe away some of her tears, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have yelled."

Clutching at the hand that was resting so tenderly against her face, Rory slowly caressed the back of it, "I'm afraid you're just going to get more angry about everything else I have to say."

Withdrawing his hand and hanging his head, he drew his hands down his face, "let me have it."

Her arms wrapped around her midsection, offering herself strength and comfort. She couldn't expect it to come from Dean after she finished speaking. "We parked back at the Diner. I reached for the handle and Jess said to wait. He reached out toward me and I didn't know what he was doing. I figured I had ice cream on my face or something. I swear I didn't know what he was going to do." Tears were streaming down her face by this point. Dean no longer had his head in his hands. He was starting to realize that this story was going someplace darker than Rory admitting to an indiscretion. "He slid across the seat" She remembered her mind freezing as she watched him. All she could think about was that this was the seat she had enjoyed for so many afternoons with Dean, enjoying that there was no console in the middle to stop the two from sliding closer.

"He grabbed at my shoulder and he kissed me. I froze. I unfroze and I started to push him away. He pulled back for a second and I said no. He said that he knew I wanted it as much as him, but I didn't." Rory was staring into space, clearly reliving that moment. She probably wouldn't have noticed if Dean had gotten up and left, but he wasn't about to do so. He reached his arms around her and drew Rory to his chest, holding her tightly. She grasped at his arm, afraid that he would let go. Nevertheless, she continued the story, "I kept pushing away, but he started kissing me again. He had me pressed against the door of the car. His hand went under my shirt and started going up and his other hand grabbed at my butt. I panicked. I twisted my arm around until I felt the door handle. We both fell out of the car onto the ground and I got up and ran all the way home. I'm sorry, Dean. I'm so, so sorry."

Dean's blood was pounding hard, he could hear every pump in his ears. He tried to remind himself that he had to calm down. He was holding this beautiful girl in his arms and she had been hurt, he needed to stop her tears. "You're sorry, Rory? He attacked you. You don't have anything to be sorry for." He pulled her tighter and ran a hand comfortingly, lovingly from the top of her hand down and through her hair. "I'm here, Rory, he can't hurt you. He can't get to you."

He felt pressure against his chest, and though he was loath to let her go, after hearing what he just did, he wasn't going to deny her space. With puffy eyes and a scratchy voice, Rory whispered, "you're not mad? But I was the one who agreed to go in the car with him. You were mad two minutes ago."

Linking their hands together, but not pulling her back into his embrace, Dean smiled down at her, "at him. I'm probably always going to be mad at him. I'd love to go pound him. I'm mad at how he manipulated you and the situation, but I'm not mad at you. I just want to make sure you're okay."

Rory looked over his shoulder, eyes focused on the nature surrounding them. She had promised her mother, more than once that she was okay. But here with Dean, seeing how close she could have come to losing this man that she loved if he reacted differently- but then he wouldn't be him if he had reacted differently. Re-focusing her eyes on Dean, her lip quivering and desperately fighting back another bout of tears, "No, I'm not okay." She fell against him and let him hold her, rubbing her back and whispering sweet things to her, she felt like she wasn't alone in carrying this. If anything would make her be okay, it would be Dean's help.

 ** _A/N: so, here you go! Two-shot only. I have recently started Gilmore Girls at the behest of a co-worker. I watched it sporadically with a little cousin when we were younger, so even though I haven't made it past season 4, I know what happens. I actually kind of hate both Lorelei and Rory. The men who fall in love with them are the ones I truly feel bad for. I hated how Rory treated Dean, especially after Jess came around. Sorry if this isn't your cup of tea!_**


End file.
